Total pages in book: 113
Estimated words: 106159 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 531(@200wpm)___ 425(@250wpm)___ 354(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106159 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 531(@200wpm)___ 425(@250wpm)___ 354(@300wpm)
The receptionist at the front desk takes one look at my scuffed knees, bleeding thighs, and shredded clothes before calling the authorities. The police officers dispatched to the hotel are professional and polite. They organize an ambulance to look over me even with me assuring them I’m fine, before sending a second team of officers to my “husband’s” room to arrest him.
Ten minutes later, I assume I am being led to a patrol car to be taken to the station to give an official statement, but doubt creeps in when a gurney is wheeled into the back of the ambulance I was just assisted out of. Bastian’s eyes are shut tight, his head is lolled to the side, and a female paramedic is straddling the gurney to compress his chest just right of a gunshot wound.
When I spot the suspicious watch of one of the original officers, my defenses instantly go up. “I didn’t kill him.”
“Watch your head,” he murmurs, his voice instantly different. It is no longer kind. I learn why when he adds, “You are under arrest. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say or do may be used against—”
“I didn’t do anything. I swear. He was alive when I left him.”
While the officer continues reading my rights, I stare at my mother standing in the hotel’s opulent foyer. She’s wrapped herself up in her arms and is rocking like she’s in shock. “Tell them what you did. Tell them this wasn’t me. I’m your daughter! You know I wouldn’t do this—”
“Natalya,” a stern voice snaps out, immediately waking me. “It’s okay. You’re safe,” Matvei assures me before he pushes a button on the headboard.
As the curtains covering the floor-to-ceiling window in his bedroom open, he holds me close to his chest while promising on repeat that I am safe and he won’t let anything happen to me. He consoles me until my shakes subside and I fall back asleep.
25
NATALYA
Feeling silly about the nightmare I haven’t endured since I slept on the cold concrete floor of an overcrowded cell for four nights, I prep my face in the bathroom before facing my embarrassment by searching for Matvei.
I doubt he left his room long before I woke. My cheek is still wearing the creases of his shirt, but I’m too hungry to hide from my shame, and desperate to explain the rarity of my nightmares.
With Matvei forcing a confession from me only an hour before the incident with Taylor, my head was still a little rattled when I went to bed, but it won’t happen again, because I won’t allow it.
As I work on tackling the bags under my eyes with concealer, the lead-up to official charges and my trial run through my head.
My mother knew I didn’t kill Bastian, but she left me out to dry alone since I refused to go along with her self-defense story during a marital dispute. I had a court-appointed attorney and no funds to pay the five-hundred-thousand-dollar bail.
If my father hadn’t decided to surprise us by tagging along for the last week of our supposed two-week break, I would still be rotting in jail. He paid my bail and got me the best lawyer money could buy.
His help should have fractured my parents’ marriage, but my mother twisted everything. She told my father that I’d agreed to marry Bastian because he was wealthy and promised to give me everything I wanted, and that I didn’t invite him to the wedding because I knew he would disapprove.
It was at that time I realized how money hungry I must have looked.
The instant a private detective my father hired showed him the ten million dollars Bastian allegedly promised to pay for each year we’d be married, he turned to me and said, “Why?”
One word and my relationship with my father shattered beyond repair.
When the evidence left no doubt which way the jury would swing, and a threat more prominent than a twenty-year-plus sentence presented, my father helped me flee Rome, but things have been strained ever since.
We haven’t had any contact in years.
If not for him upholding his promise to keep me safe, I would pretend he’s dead, like I do my mother.
Hating how scarce my list of allies is, I sigh out my frustration before rushing my makeup routine so I can face my issues head-on instead of hiding from them as I have for the past several years.
Hiding fixed nothing. I’m just imprisoned in Russia instead of Rome.
Once I’m happy with how I’m presenting, I head into the main area of the penthouse apartment. I take a stumbling step back when I’m greeted by the last person I expected to see. “Hey.”
Saka smiles at my skittish response before I wipe it off his face in the only way I know how. By grossing him out. “You do realize even the apartments at this hotel only have one bed, right?”